Zimbabwe’s Rival Leaders Deploy Their Chess Pieces, With Political Power the Prize

New York Times
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: February 25, 2009

JOHANNESBURG — Two weeks after Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was sworn in as prime minister and joined President Robert Mugabe in governing, the archrivals are openly matching wits and wiles in a struggle to dominate the political landscape of a country whose people endure hunger, cholera and political repression.

A senior official in Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, Eddie Cross, wrote recently that this contest was playing out “building by building, street by street, close combat between two forces.”

So far, Mr. Mugabe and hard-liners in his party, ZANU-PF, have remained true to form, ruthlessly claiming the prerogatives of power. But Mr. Tsvangirai and major opposition ministers — especially those for finance and education — have shown a willingness to confront them and seize the initiative where they can.

Mr. Mugabe, the 85-year-old patriarch who vowed during the election last year that only God could unseat him after nearly three decades in office, made a typically daring power grab on Wednesday through the state media that are his mouthpiece. He had The Herald post a list of the senior civil servants he had unilaterally picked to lead every ministry, something forbidden by the power-sharing agreement he and Mr. Tsvangirai signed.

Mr. Tsvangirai, who is supposed to manage the day-to-day operations of the government, called a news conference in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, and issued a statement saying the move violated the agreement, declaring it “null and void.”

But their skirmishes have sprawled far beyond the halls of government. Even as Mr. Tsvangirai has vowed to restore the rule of law, militias associated with Mr. Mugabe’s party have sought to take over white-owned farms, though a regional tribunal of judges ruled that the owners were entitled to keep their land under the terms of a treaty that Zimbabwe and other southern African nations had adopted.
The violent, chaotic seizure of thousands of white-owned farms from 2000 to 2003 helped destroy Zimbabwe’s commercial farming sector and contributed to the collapse of food production, economists say.

Mr. Tsvangirai said Wednesday that a new wave of what he called illegal farming disruptions must stop and told the ministers of home affairs — one from his party, one from Mr. Mugabe’s — to “bring the full weight of the law down on the perpetrators.”

But Mr. Tsvangirai has made the same demands privately to Mr. Mugabe, and so far the shared control of the Home Ministry and the police force it oversees has evidently left Mr. Tsvangirai unable to exert authority.

On Wednesday, Mike Campbell, the farmer who originally challenged the government’s seizure of his farm in the regional tribunal and won — though only after he and his wife were viciously beaten during a land invasion in June — found his farm in Chegutu again under threat. A group of invaders associated with a powerful ZANU-PF official who wants his land came demanding that he leave.

Mr. Campbell, 76, and his wife, Angela, 66, departed for Harare, but their son Bruce and son-in-law Ben Freeth stayed to guard the place. Mr. Freeth said in a telephone interview that the family requested police protection in the afternoon, but by evening it was not forthcoming.

“We will try to sort out anything that comes,” said Mr. Freeth, whose skull and ribs were fractured during the attack by invaders in June.

Mr. Tsvangirai has also failed to win the release of human rights and political advocates who have been abducted by state security agents. Even Roy Bennett, a white farmer who is one of his closest allies and his choice to be deputy agriculture minister, remains in a fetid prison cell in the eastern city of Mutare on what the opposition says are trumped-up terrorism charges, even though Mr. Tsvangirai had personally guaranteed that Mr. Bennett would appear in court and a judge on Tuesday ordered his release on bail.

But Mr. Tsvangirai and his combative finance minister, Tendai Biti, have managed to come up with enough money to give each soldier, police officer, teacher and civil servant a monthly allowance of $100 in foreign currency. The army has been plagued with desertions, and most schools have ceased to function because hyperinflation has made teachers’ salaries so worthless that they do not even cover bus fare to work.

Two million of Zimbabwe’s three million schoolchildren are now out of the classroom, the new education minister, David Coltart, estimated. This week, he persuaded teachers to go back to work, though they had gotten the token $100 only for February, with no guarantees for the future.
The leaders of the two main teacher unions said in interviews on Wednesday that they were convinced Mr. Coltart was sincerely trying to raise more money from donors to pay teachers a decent salary — and had asked the 62,000 teachers they represent to go back to work.

“We are banking on the hope and trust that the minister will deliver on the promises that have been made,” said Tendai Chikowore, leader of the Zimbabwe Teachers’ Association.